Loved and lost: When you regret giving something away

Why do so many people keep so much stuff? One reason: “It might be worth something someday.”

A co-worker reminded me of this today. When she was 21 or 22, her then-boyfriend painted her portrait. She married someone else, and the portrait eventually found its way into her mother’s closet. “She kept it for close to 20 years,” she says of her mother.

After her mother had a stroke, she and her sisters helped her move to an assisted living facility. They also had to make some hard decisions about what was left behind. The portrait was one of the things to go.

Today, my co-worker was reminded of that portrait, and she found her long-lost boyfriend’s current work on the Internet. He’s still an artist, and his paintings aren’t cheap. Hers was one of his earliest works. If she’d kept it instead of chucking it, what would it be worth?

The real value of my co-worker’s portrait, I think, is how personal of a gift it was and what it captured (a romance, and part of her youth). If she still had it, it would still be in the closet — or be sold. But part of her regrets throwing it away.

I regret losing things over the years, like the 100-page “novel” I wrote when I was 12, but I don’t regret any of the conscious decisions I’ve made to give or throw things away. If I kept everything that had sentimental value, I wouldn’t be much closer to solving my clutter problem than I was a year ago. I made choices to gain space. On the other hand, if I found out I’d chucked something valuable, would I feel some remorse? Of course I would.

I think my co-worker made the best decision she could at the time with the information she had, and under stressful circumstances.